All hail the start of the NCAA tournament. Given that it is 16 degrees in Chicago on the first day of spring, that seems reason enough to stay inside and watch basketball all day.
News flash: The weather sucks in Chicago.
The start of the tournament will launch the inevitable cries that the players should be paid. I can hear the chorus now: The NCAA and colleges make big money off the three-week basketball feast and the poor players get nothing.
Pay the players!
Well, as a public service announcement, I’m here to say it can’t happen and it shouldn’t happen.
The argument is based on a myth: College athletic programs are rolling in cash.
Just the opposite is true. Most athletic programs lose money, and have to be subsidized by their university. These are hugely expensive endeavors, considering the costs of scholarships, facilities, coaches, etc. People see the 100,000-plus in Michigan Stadium for a football game and believe that’s the case everywhere. It isn’t.
Also, the cost of success in college athletics keeps going up exponentially. It’s an arms race of ridiculous proportions. There’s a never-ending need to spend millions on lavish facilities to keep up with the school down the road. As a result, whatever money comes in goes out just as quickly.
For the vast majority of schools, the funds aren’t there to pay the athletes. Not without a dramatic cutback on sports and scholarships.
Also, just who would get paid? Only football and basketball players? They bring in the big money, right?
Again, another myth. Plenty of those sports lose money at schools not named Ohio State (football) or Kentucky (basketball). Meanwhile, there are women’s basketball and hockey programs that make a profit for their schools. Why shouldn’t those athletes get paid?
In fact, I can’t see any model that doesn’t include paying every scholarship athlete. It is the only equitable way to determine who gets a paycheck. If you’re going to pay the starting quarterback, you also have to pay the woman cross country runner.
If you include all the scholarship athletes, then you’re talking millions to cover the costs. Again, the money isn’t there. I can assure you schools will respond by cutting scholarships and programs.
Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany got criticized this week for a hardline view about paying players. Sports Illustrated’s Andy Staples had the report about the commissioner’s remarks in Ed O’Bannon’s lawsuit against the NCAA.
Staples wrote:
In a declaration filed last week in federal court in support of the NCAA’s motion against class certification, Delany threatened that any outcome that results in athletes getting a piece of the schools’ television revenue could force the schools of the Big Ten to de-emphasize athletics as the Ivy League’s schools did decades ago.
“…it has been my longstanding belief that The Big Ten’s schools would forgo the revenues in those circumstances and instead take steps to downsize the scope, breadth and activity of their athletic programs,” Delany wrote. “Several alternatives to a ‘pay for play’ model exist, such as the Division III model, which does not offer any athletics-based grants-in-aid, and, among others, a need-based financial model. These alternatives would, in my view, be more consistent with The Big Ten’s philosophy that the educational and lifetime economic benefits associated with a university education are the appropriate quid pro quo for its student athletes.”
Many people viewed Delany’s comments as extreme. They can’t conceive that the Big Ten would forgo billions of dollars in athletic revenue.
Maybe not, but Delany knows paying players would create nothing but chaos. Such as: Why should the star point guard get paid the same amount as the 14th player at the end of the bench? Here come more lawsuits.
It isn’t a stretch for Delany to say the Big Ten presidents wouldn’t want any part of that.
Besides, the athletes already get paid. As a parent with a junior in high school, I am getting a harsh education about the cost of higher education. If my son wants to go Indiana, it will cost in excess of $40,000 per year for out-of-state tuition.
Yet thanks to their scholarships, the top Hoosier athletes get all expenses paid. That’s nearly $200,000 over four years.
Somebody please tell me how that’s not getting paid. I love my son, but I would love him even more if he could throw a football 60 yards.
So as you watch the NCAA tournament, just know that the players aren’t going home empty-handed. Those scholarships are a nice haul for being able to shoot a basketball.
Don’t tell clowney, manziel or oladipo….they make their schools 200k a week.
The headline is a bit misleading.
It’s not about whether it’s “enough.” You make good points in the actual article about most athletic programs not being profitable and about the sticky wickets that inevitably pop up when you pay the quarterback but not the coxswain. (Also, you’d be establishing an employer/employee relationship, meaning all this now gets taken out of the hands of coaches and would be covered under US labor law, and the laws of the various states regarding unemployment and workman’s comp and a million other little things.)
But the point you miss is that the equation USED to be far more balanced – you got a college scholarship, and the school used your services for four years, and maybe you brought more applications and donations to the school based on how successful your team was or how big your star was, and maybe you didn’t. But schools weren’t selling guys’ jerseys and they weren’t using them in marketing campaigns.
Millions ARE being generated by the top echelon of college athletes, and those athletes AREN’T seeing any of that money (and the value of their actual college education could be debated as well, depending on the school – do you pay a Duke guy less because his education is worth more than someone from a land grant university?) so the equation isn’t really equitable for the top guys.
For the softball shortstop? The university’s probably not making money on that person individually, and probably not on the team, either (whether it’s a top program like Arizona State or not). But you can’t pay the power forward and not pay the power lifter, you know?
The money LOOKS like it’s there – but it’s really not, not across the board, and not in equal proportion. D1 schools put themselves in bad positions NOW trying to out-do their competitors – what do you think will happen when they’re in a system where they not only have to recruit a star quarterback with coaches, bowl games, pro style offenses and campus life but they have to match or beat a conference rival school’s financial package?
If Delany and his Big Ten schools really want to have an impact on college athletics, they could go back to their pre-1962 rules: No athletic scholarships, no training table. Ohio State’s faculty senate even turned down a Rose Bowl bid in the early 1960s. You could look it up. College athletics as it has existed for decades is a unique American fraud, and all the money that rolls in and never ends up in the players’ pocket is the biggest evidence.
Ed, you are so off-base on so many fronts. You’ve bitten the NCAA and schools talking points, hook, line and sinker.
The whiny “it’s too HARD to figure out how it will work!” defense is just so lazy and lame. All these brilliant Legends and Leaders at schools across the nation can’t figure something like this out?
If Jim Delaney can be paid his millions based on market value, why shouldn’t players? How about the NCAA institute a cap on compensation for ADs and coaches, as well? Do you see NO ethical issue here? Or is that just too hard to tackle, too?
Players only get 1 year scholarships. Deliver $1 million in value in a year, get hurt, the coach cuts you…you don’t even realize your full “$200,000” scholarship. In fact, you’re SOL.
Your son can have a job while in school to pay for pizza and clothes and dates. Full-scholly athletes can not.
Schools don’t make money because they CHOOSE not to make money. They CHOOSE to spend every dollar they bring in. They choose to build $10 mil weight rooms and $200 mil stadiums. They choose to pay coaches $6 mil a year and millions more for buy-outs. If you pay the football and basketball players, and there’s no money to field a baseball or soccer team, so what? What do they have to to with the education at a university? Have them raise their own funds and operate as a club team. See the Cal golf team. If you’re a smaller school and can’t afford a full program, drop down.
In the end, everyone makes so much money off the efforts of the players – ADs, coaches, sports network personalities, sports network producers, sports network writers, bloggers, journalists, equipment companies. Talk about the value of the scholarships, but take another look at graduation rates. That doesn’t even count the concept of an education vs. a diploma.
And even if you do get a diploma, you’ve given up your right to due process, your image and likeness for eternity, and at some schools, your right to privacy (see how OSU monitors athletes – even cross-country athletes’ – bank accounts). Get hurt or crippled or brain damaged, you’re on your own.
In the end, it’s not about the details, it’s about the principles.